We watched again this week, which I guess says something. The kids requested it, which is pretty rare (apart from their Friday night ritual viewing of Monk, they don't have a lot of must-see TV).
This week, the heroes first face off against trained attack dogs! They're wearing protective gear, but still pretty scary stuff, especially for kids. The goal was to get across the yard the dogs were guarding, but more important--since getting to the back door required the hero to be stronger than two German Shepherds--was attitude, which seems to be the consistent thread here. Because of this, Stan could be especially subjective in his judgments--they were to show "courage" but his interpretation of whether and how this was displayed was unpredictable. Monkey Girl redeemed herself for her last week's bad showing by letting the dogs drag her around for almost ten minutes, and eventually reached the door. After this test, the heroine Cell Phone Girl was eliminated, as far as I could tell mainly because she complained of a headache, seemingly making that an excuse for her inability to complete the task. The implied message being that "Superheroes don't whine." :)
The rest of the show was devoted to costume makeovers, most of which were pretty "meh," although some were improvements. But this, too, led to an elimination. At each elimination, three candidates are called up, each is told why they're being considered for elimination, and each has to tell Stan why they should be allowed to stay--only one is actually asked to leave, of course. In this case, the hero Tyveculous (sp?) is called up because--when his new costume sucked!--he first told Stan he liked it, then later admitted that he didn't (and returned to his old gear); "Superheroes don't lie." (I thought that this was understandable, actually--after the earlier test, the subjectivity of the testing was very obvious, and the guy really didn't want to risk making Stan angry.) The hero Feedback was called up because he'd made a crack about Tyveculous's new costume, and according to Stan, "Superheroes don't make each other feel bad." (You know, I've got The Avengers on disc, and I know for a fact that the Silver Age team--which Stan wrote--spent plenty of time sniping at and insulting each other. :))
But the one eliminated was Iron Enforcer, who actually hadn't done a damn thing wrong during the costume makeover, but had been called up at--I think--every other elimination opportunity. This was beyond subjective, but all became clear at the end of the show, when Stan recruited him to be...a Super-Villain. Another costume change followed (the seven-year-old's reaction: "Whoa, that's so cool!"). So it seems pretty obvious that this was planned from the start and that Iron Enforcer was chosen for the team in order that he could be dumped at this point. But it's still kind of a neat twist.
I am a little embarassed to admit that this thing is holding my interest :).
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